Page 3 of Sniper's Pride

She could go back home and see her mother at last. She could try to figure out which one of them had causedthis distance between them. She had nieces and nephews she’d never met, and she was sure her network of cousins had some things to say to her after all these years. She could repair those bridges before they burned up altogether.

If Mariah lived, she could do what she wanted with her life. She wouldn’t have to wait tables in her uncle’s dinky roadside diner in the middle of nowhere the way she’d been doing when David found her on that fateful hunting trip. And she wouldn’t have to play the society princess role she’d never quite managed to pull off to anyone’s satisfaction in David’s snooty circles, where everyone’s great-grandparents had known each other and they all had clear opinions about uppity backwoods tramps like her.

If Mariah lived, she could find out who the hell Mariah McKenna really was.

Assuming, of course, that there was anyone in there, locked away behind all her bad decisions.

You told me not to marry him, Mama,she acknowledged inside her head. It was the only way she talked to her mother these days. Another scar she carried around and pretended wasn’t there.You begged me to think twice, but I was sure I knew better.

If her mother were here now, Mariah knew what she would say in that smoker’s voice Mariah had always secretly thought sounded like velvet.Think,baby girl.You didn’t use much of your brain hopping into this mess, but you sure could use it to get yourself out.

Panic kicked at her, and for a minute she couldn’t tell if it was another anaphylactic episode. Mariah laid her hand against her throat and told herself that she was fine. That she was alive and could breathe. She told herselfthat a few times, then a few more, until her heart rate slowed down again.

She decided it was nervous energy, and she would deal with it the only way she could. Bydoingsomething. She pulled one of her bags from under the bed, settling for the one she knew she could carry no matter what. The one she knew she could pick up and actually run with if she had to. And then Mariah took her time packing, letting her mind wander from the task at hand to all those videos she’d watched online about how to pack a carry-on bag for a monthlong trip. Or three months. Or an indefinite amount of time. It had been one more way she’d tried her best to fit in with the effortlessly languid set of people she knew during her marriage. Women who seemed to be able to trot off to Europe for a month with either the contents of their entire house or nothing more than a handbag, a single black dress, and a few scarves.

David had mocked her, of course, though she’d convinced herself it was good-natured teasing at the time. Sure it was.

Maybe you can watch a video on how to make a baby,he had said once, smiling at her across the bedroom as if he’d been whispering sweet nothings in her ear.

The cruelty of it took her breath away now, the same as it had then. This time, however, she didn’t have to hide it. She blinked away the moisture in her eyes, then threw the shirt she’d been folding to the side because her hand was shaking.

Had she really tried to tell herself he hadn’t meant that? She knew better now. But she’d spent years excusing everything and anything David did.

Because she’d been the one who’d been broken, not him.

David had kept up his end of the bargain. He’d swept Mariah away from that abandoned backwoods town and he’d showered her with everything his life had to offer. He’d paid to give her a makeover. To make her teeth extra shiny. He’d found her a stylist and hired a voice coach so she could transform herself into the sort of swan who belonged on his arm. Or at the very least, so she wouldn’t embarrass him.

All she’d ever been expected to do was give him a baby.

Looking back, it was easy to see how David’s behavior had worsened with every passing month she didn’t get pregnant. Less Prince Charming, more resentful spouse. And increasingly vicious.

When she’d walked in on him and one of the maids, he hadn’t even been apologetic.

Why should I bother to give you fidelity when you can’t do the one thing you low-class, white trash, trailer park girls are any good at?

She would hate herself forever for not leaving immediately that first time. For staying in that house and sleeping in that bed for months afterward. For telling herself that it was a slip, that was all. That they could work through it.

As if she hadn’t seen the hateful way David had looked at her.

She had. Of course she had.

The charming man she’d fallen in love with had never existed. David could pull out the smiles and the manners when he liked. But it only lasted as long as he got his way.

The trouble was, Mariah had turned thirty. And despite years of trying, they hadn’t ever had so much as apregnancy scare. She’d found David with the first maid the week after her birthday. But it had taken her months to leave.

He never bothered to pull out his charm for her again, and she’d spent more agonizing months than she cared to recall imagining she could fix something he didn’t care was broken.

In the end, after the second time she’d caught him in their bed with another woman employed in their household, Mariah had been faced with a choice. She could look the other way, as she knew many wives in their social circle chose to do. She could figure out a way to keep what she liked about life as Mrs. David Lanier and ignore the rest. It was a dance she’d seen performed in front of her for years, from David’s parents right on down.

But the part of her that had been sleeping for a decade had woken up. That scrappy, tenacious McKenna part of her that she’d locked away. McKennas hadrough and tumblestamped onto their stubborn, ornery bones. They fought hard, loved foolishly, and didn’t take much notice of anyone else’s opinions on how they went about it or what kinds of messes they made along the way.

Roll over and play dead long enough,her grandmother used to say,and pretty soon you won’t be playing.

Mariah had decided she’d played enough. And maybe it had taken months of humiliation, but she’d left.

And she would live through this, too, by God.

“I should watch a video on what Mama would do to a man who treated her like this,” Mariah muttered to herself, aware as she spoke thatheraccent didn’t slip no matter how angry she got.

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